Friday, January 22, 2010

Third Tuesday of the Month

Since 2002, I've been assisting Helen Archer ( shown in photo above ) with the monthly food distribution. I used to drive the truck down to the city of Napa to pick up the canned foods, bread, rice, beans, powdered milk and an assortment of other government issued surplus foods. They are generally pretty good, but you never know what is going to be allocated. One month, you might get box loads of cereal. The next month it will be bags of pinto beans. When the trucks arrive back in Calistoga around 9 AM, there are usually 5 or 6 volunteers there who help unload the trucks and bag up the food on four large tables that have grocery bags lined up. After a certain point, Helen will go pick up the high school kids who get community service credits for helping out. This is a fun activity, and people appreciate knowing that the food will be here on a month to month basis.

Today, it has been a week since we have been offering tours of the CIA and so far, it has been going okay. Come Monday, we will have a whole crop of new students coming in for orientation. Our new teaching kitchen is almost complete and so is the new chocolate room. Eventually we will have a cafe and a tasting area.